Eagle Eyes
by Raquel
Summary: It all starts when Dudley comes home with a black eye, then escalates into a twisted adventure when a Muggle girl accidently discovers the magical world. Chapter 6 now posted.
1. Prologue and Dudley's Black Eye

Eagle Eyes: The Quest for Rowena  
  
By Raquel  
  
Prologue  
  
Until 1878, it was standard practice among wizard kind to sent wrongdoers back in time to languish in the Dark Ages until they died. Which, due to the fact that they were sent to the Dark Ages, was invariably several hundred years before their sentencing. In fact, they then died before they were born, causing several people many headaches as they tried to plot the lifelines of their ancestors. It was a rather interesting case that involved a man becoming his own great-grandfather that finally got the practice abolished.  
  
The wrongdoers were brought back from the Dark Ages (causing more headaches as they abruptly became several hundred years older) and either released or put in a temporary prison. Azkaban opened in 1893, a new prison for a new century, and by 1900, almost everyone had forgotten about the old practices.  
  
Except for one man.  
  
His name was Waldo Tribune, and he was certifiably mad. He was also one of the most indispensable members of the Department of Mysteries because he was the only living human being that could see into the future and the past. (This was widely accepted as the reason for his madness) Waldo was tall and thin and crooked, with bright white hair and a cast in his right eye that made it point perpetually upwards. It was unsettling to talk to him; to stand there and wonder what Waldo's eye was looking at. At the exact same time, you had to try to piece together what Waldo was talking about, because he talked alternately in a giggling whisper and a maniac shout that drew the attention of people standing a football field's length away. For these reasons, people went out of their way to avoid him, sometimes several hundred miles out of their way.  
  
It was sometime in late February when Waldo hit on something big. Hugely big. In fact, it was so hugely impressively big that he left his office to let the Minister of Magic know about it. Unfortunately, once he left his office, he immediately forgot what on earth he had left it for and wandered around trying to remember why he was holding an umbrella without a handle and a map of southwestern Colombia.  
  
It took him quite a long time to remember why-almost ninety-five years. By this time one of the janitors had found him lurking in a corner drawing plans for a better espresso maker on dirty tiles ripped from the women's bathroom. Waldo's office had not been cleaned once in his absence, and once he'd been re-locked inside by the janitor, he spent three weeks scraping the dust from all his plans into the umbrella. Then he went on to tweezing the mold out of the carpet, and.  
  
Well, to tell the truth, it was February the next year when Waldo remembered why he'd left his office ninety-six years before. This time, due to an uncharacteristic amount of insight, he sent an owl to the Minister of Magic instead of trying to find him himself.  
  
It took a month for the reply, which was because Waldo had written in ancient Sumerian. But he did get a reply.  
  
YOU STUPID WANKER, the note read. WHY DIDN"T YOU TELL US THIS SOONER?  
  
In reply Waldo sent the espresso plans and the map of Colombia. Three weeks later he was relived of his duties and sent to the Incurable ward at St. Mungos, finally filling the bed that had been reserved for him for most of his long life. Fudge, however, was screwing himself up to begin preparations for the largest full-scale manhunt since Sirius Black.  
  
Not that he felt the public needed to know anything about it. No sense in worrying the public now, when it was so close to reelection time.  
  
Chapter 1: Dudley's Black Eye  
  
The rather depressing and completely uneventful July that followed the rather exciting and action-packed end of term Harry had had sent him in to a sort of stupor. Most of his energy went into staring blankly out of the window or at his wall by turns, though twice a week he sent letters to Mad- Eye Moody, who was as good as his word and after not hearing from Harry for a week had Apparated into the Dursley's living room. The chaos that that had caused still brought a smile to Harry's face, albeit a weak one.  
  
In fact, the most interesting thing that had happened that July was playing itself out downstairs, though Harry didn't know it until Uncle Vernon's voice echoed up through the heating vents, loud and raspy with rage. It was motivation enough for Harry to get off his bed and creep over to his door to see if what was happening had anything to do with him-though he had sent a letter to Moody less than a day before.  
  
"-hope you gave better than you got, Dudley," Uncle Vernon was growling from the living room. "Can't count on another boxing title with this."  
  
"He snuck up on me," whined Dudley. "I could have beaten him to a pulp in a fair fight."  
  
"What kind of world is it where nice boys get picked on?" Aunt Petunia moaned. Harry, though shut inside his room, could see his boney aunt wringing her hands together. "That eye looks dreadful, Diddy-kins." Harry pushed his door open a crack, his curiosity getting the better of him. So Dudley had found a decent opponent at last. Harry would have paid quite a few Galleons to see Dudley get exactly what he deserved.  
  
At the base of the stairs, Harry paused, caught between horror and laughter.  
  
Dudley's eye was completely swollen shut, and was the sort of sickly purplish-black of old liver with a rich variety of orange and green-purple shadows that played down his fat cheek and up past his eyebrow. This meaty effect was increased by the fact that Dudley's face had quite a lot of flesh on it, and by the large bloody steak that Aunt Petunia was flapping at him. He did not see Harry because his cousin was on his blind side, but Harry knew that it wouldn't be long. He quickly snuck out the front door, knowing that if Dudley saw him, he would be pressed into servitude.  
  
He set off to the play park, hoping that the primary school children wouldn't be there, and at the same time knowing that if they were they would run as soon as they saw him. The thought depressed him thoroughly.  
  
I'm quite nice, or at least I think I am, Harry thought. Not that the neighbors are really to blame, they only really know what they're told.  
  
The playground was mostly empty. A few seven-year-olds played a spirited game of football in the field just beyond the monkey bars, and a girl with long wavy blonde hair sat on the only swing that wasn't broken, her back to Harry. She was so very thin and staring so very vaguely into the distance that Harry called out before he could stop himself: "Luna?"  
  
The girl looked up. It was most definitely not Luna Lovegood. This girl didn't have the same bulging eyes or the bemused expression that most commonly decorated Luna's remote features. She did have very long blonde hair, but her face was covered in much the same colors as Dudley. In fact, one of her lips was still bleeding, leaving a small dark stain on the gray collar of her blazer. Her eyes pinned Harry on the spot: pale blue eyes with black rims, eyes like the flat smooth ice that forms on still water.  
  
"My name isn't Luna," she said, wincing as her face moved. "And if you're one of the bastards who beat me up, have the decency to wait until I can move before you come back for a second round."  
  
"It was you who put that black eye on Dudley?" Harry gasped. The girl nodded, her lip bleeding into the stiff white collar above her gray blazer. Grimacing, she blotted it with her sleeve.  
  
Her eyes rounded with recognition. "You must be the Potter boy," she muttered around her sleeve. "Well, I could still kick you around, even if you are a criminal." Examining the blood on her sleeve, she glared at him. "That blonde monkey is your cousin? Guess criminal tendencies run in your family." She kicked at the gravel under the swings with a pair of dirty old trainers that clashed violently with the neat gray uniform of Stonewall High.  
  
"I was supposed to go to Stonewall High," Harry said conversationally.  
  
"Yea, I've heard. What happened to you? Beat the snot out of Dudley?" she snorted with laughter at the unlikelihood of this ever happening.  
  
Harry leaned against the swing set and watched the football players. "I blew up my aunt."  
  
The girl nearly fell off the swing. Her head snapped around, sending her long blonde hair flying. "You-blew up your aunt?" Her mouth fell open, then she closed it. "Yea right, you probably robbed a corner store or something." She began examining her face with thin fingers. "If you blew up your aunt it would have been in the papers."  
  
"It took a bit of hushing up, yea. But I've got millions of dollars in stolen goods, so it was a snap," Harry said dryly. The girl glared at him again, one of her hands tenderly examining a rising black eye. "Don't be an ass. Of course I'm not a criminal."  
  
"If you aren't a criminal, then why aren't you here half the year?"  
  
"Private school."  
  
"Hey, my dad works for your uncle and he is a bloody tightwad. How did you weasel enough money for private school out of him?" the girl demanded then winced as the splits below her eyebrows broke open. "Bloody hell." She leaned forward to stop the blood running into her eyes, her long hair hanging over her puffy and discolored face.  
  
"Are you going to be all right?" Harry asked automatically.  
  
"Yea, I guess. I've had worse." She tenderly blotted the splits, her face irritated behind the bruises. "Of course, that was in a fair fight." She twirled the swing around, winding up the chain until she was a foot higher off the ground. "You've got good manners for a hopeless criminal," she said as the swing unwound. "Better manners than your bloody cousin, anyway."  
  
"Should I take offense at that?"  
  
She laughed as the swing finished unwinding. "I guess you should. I would. He looks a bit porcine if you ask me."  
  
"So why did you hit him?" Harry asked after a pause.  
  
The girl made a rude noise. "'S none of your damned business. Let's just say he ran out of boys to hit." She glanced up at Harry. Her eyes, though bruised and quite puffy, were an amazing shade of blue. "That's an interesting scar."  
  
They talked for quite awhile, about nearly everything. While comparing childhoods, Harry learned that her name was Pallas Leander and she lived on number 14 Magnolia Crescent. She was three years younger than he was, and hated Stonewall High with a passion. Harry couldn't talk as much as she could: there were several hundred wizarding laws to which he would have to answer if he said anything about what he actually did for most of the year. Pallas, however, didn't seem to notice his silence.  
  
"What about you? What do you do now, besides serve time?"  
  
At least he thought she hadn't noticed. "Not much. Private school isn't much different than Stonewall High."  
  
"Better uniforms, probably. I feel like someone's dirty rags in this."  
  
"A bit better, yeah." Pallas shot another piercing look in his direction, but didn't continue probing. She unwound again, her skinny legs flying out as she spun. "Actually, I thought you were one of my friends from school."  
  
"Luna?" Pallas replied. "Yes, that did seem an odd way to greet a perfect stranger." The swing stopped turning and she swayed back and forth, shaking her head to clear it. "God, that's dizzy."  
  
There was a dull thud as the soccer ball the younger children were playing with sailed over the monkey bars and landed near Harry's feet. Automatically he picked it up to throw it to the dark-haired girl who had come trotting after it. As he straightened, however, the girl looked at him with wide eyes and stopped moving towards him. Pallas watched with mild interest.  
  
Harry threw the ball towards the little girl, accepting with a sinking heart that she'd probably been warned to stay away from 'that Potter boy'. It hit her in the stomach, and, more out of surprise than the force of the throw, she toppled off her feet and burst into tears. Guiltily Harry started towards her, but the girl scrambled away.  
  
"Oh, don't be stupid," Pallas snapped at her. "He's not going to hurt you." The girl grabbed the ball and ran away. "Soft little idiot."  
  
Harry sighed and sat down on the mulch that surrounded the swings. "It's nothing. I'm used to it."  
  
Pallas snorted. "If you are, then you must be more messed up than I thought." When Harry looked up indignantly, she elaborated, "No one should be used to that kind of fear."  
  
"I didn't say I enjoyed it!"  
  
"I didn't say you did." Pallas glared right back at him, her bruises darkening with anger.  
  
"Well I guess I'm too used to people whispering about me and having stupid misconceptions about what I'm like! Sorry!" Harry snapped, throwing a woodchip at the play set. It shattered enjoyably. "I mean, do I want to be famous? No!"  
  
Pallas didn't say anything for a good minute or so, but then she turned to Harry with an odd look on her face. "Do me a favor, Harry," she said, sounding perfectly friendly. "Take a tight hold on your ears, and give them a good tug."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because maybe that will get your head out of your ass!" She got up off the swing and stalked away, her long hair blowing around her gray jacket. Harry snorted and leaned back against the swing set. He was rather glad she had left. It saved him from having to think up a reply to her extraordinary statement.  
  
With a groan, he heaved himself to his feet and slouched back to Privet Drive, dreading the reception he was bound to receive.  
  
Author's Note: Well, it lives. That's all I have to say, because I hate these end-of-story things anyhow. Chapter two is currently in editing and may or may not make it up on the site in two or three days. Review, if you don't mind. 


	2. The Utterly Strange Letters

Eagle Eyes: The Quest for Rowena  
  
By Raquel  
  
Chapter Two: The Utterly Strange Letters  
  
"Minister Fudge?"  
  
Fudge looked up. His thinning hair was in total disarray from the many times he'd run his fat fingers through it. "Yes, Troy?" he asked urgently.  
  
Troy cleared his throat. He was a stooped young man with long brown hair and soft brown eyes in a round face. In contrast to the rest of his body, his fingers were like skewers as he pointed to a sheaf of parchment. "We've pinpointed the discrepancy."  
  
Fudge flipped over his chair as he stood and rushed across the room. "Have you figured out where she is?"  
  
"Well, sort of," Troy said guiltily. "One of the lawbreakers sent back to 945 and brought back in 1915 was a woman named Pallas Warren. She er.dallied with one of the local men while she was there. Since she was brought forward from 945, she was.er.pregnant when they brought her back to the present day. The child she bore eight months later was the grandmother of Rowena Ravenclaw, misplaced into the 1900's."  
  
"So.you're saying." Fudge said slowly. He'd never been good with the time- travel part of the Ministry. It gave him a headache.  
  
"The great-granddaughter of Pallas Warren is Rowena Ravenclaw. All the records from the time Hogwarts was founded show it. The problem is that by removing her great-grandmother and grandmother from 945, we've created a sort of glitch in the way things ought to work. As of this moment, Rowena Ravenclaw is in the present day. We've got to find her and sent her back to her own time."  
  
"Well, that shouldn't be too hard." Fudge smiled encouragingly. He felt the smile slide off his face as Troy shook his head.  
  
"Rowena was the name she took when she was seventeen," Troy said. "We've got no idea what she was named before then."  
  
Fudge bit his lip. "Well, if Hogwarts is still there, then Rowena must have gotten back."  
  
"Yes, but we've got to look for her. Quickly. If we don't find her by the end of the summer, we're in trouble. Rowena Ravenclaw was exactly sixteen when she started work on Hogwarts, and we've got to give her all sorts of special training if she's to succeed."  
  
"I'll put everyone I can spare on it."  
  
~  
  
Much to Harry's surprise, Pallas rung the doorbell the next morning. He had gotten the impression that they'd not hit it off too well the previous day. Pallas' face was decorated with a shock of bruises more colorful than the previous day, but her long hair was neater and her eyes a little less accusatory. A Stonewall High hockey jersey was tucked into her tattered jeans and her blonde hair was pushed behind her ears. She really was very pretty.  
  
Harry was a little taken aback when she smacked him smartly in the face.  
  
"You utter bastard," she began without so much as a hello, "why the bloody hell didn't you tell me?" Pallas stamped her foot and swiped a handful of blonde waves behind her ears. "You just wait until I've run off home and have the bloody police at my door before you say, 'Oh, by the way, I'm currently being hunted'!"  
  
Harry blinked, running a hand over his smarting cheekbone. "Always a pleasure to see you too."  
  
"Don't I know it," Pallas replied. "Look, are the police after you? Or are they after some other Harry Potter? And why on earth don't the police know where you live?"  
  
"Since I'm attending St. Whatsis, shouldn't they have my number on speed- dial?" Harry asked sarcastically.  
  
Pallas frowned. "Now that I think of it, they did say that they'd tried to reach you, but the jackass didn't say how. He was a bit of a jerk, and he had the ugliest hat I've seen since Professor Pinksley retired." She shifted her weight uncomfortably. "Mind letting me in? People are staring."  
  
Harry moved aside, and she moved inside, whistling at how clean the living room was. "I bet you could cut sushi on this carpet," she remarked. "And I'm sorry about smacking you. I've had a bit of a stressful morning. Could you tell me what this is?"  
  
He'd been about to make a smart remark, but it flew out of his mind as Pallas handed him a thick parchment envelope bearing the distinctive seal of the Ministry of Magic. "How did you get that?" Harry glanced up at her, trying to see what her expression was behind her mask of purple bruises. "Have you read it?"  
  
"The post. It's for me, and I've read it, but I haven't got a clue what these people are talking about." Pallas wiggled her long fingers as if she were playing an invisible keyboard. "I thought it was joke mail, but I'm not so sure. It's just so weird, you know? And you've got to be one of the weirdest people I know, so it made sense to bring it to you."  
  
"Er.right." He suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and instead scanned the letter. "What's this about?"  
  
"I'm not, you know," Pallas said coldly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Mad."  
  
"I didn't say you were."  
  
"Yes, but it does seem like you wanted to say it."  
  
Harry didn't answer. He was reading the letter again, more slowly this time.  
  
Ministry of Magic July 17, 1996  
  
PALLAS LEANDER  
  
You may not realize this, but it's possible that you should be living in the year 989. Terribly sorry about the suddenness of our message, but it's important that you report to the Department of Mysteries by August 2. If you are not there by August 2, you will be brought there. Again, terribly sorry about the suddenness, but it'll be for the best once we get you back where you belong.  
  
You see, your real name is Rowena. Rowena Ravenclaw, of course, and, well, you shouldn't be here right now. In fact, you should have died about 900 years ago. Like we said, just get to the Ministry of Magic by August 2 and we'll work it all out. Once more, we are really very sorry about this, but by August 3 we've got to send you to the 900's to live in the Dark Ages. Not that we really want to, but it's for your own good.  
  
THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC  
  
"This is weird," he said slowly. Pallas snorted derisively. Harry looked up at her. "Is your proper name Rowena Ravenclaw?"  
  
Pallas frowned. "Well, my proper name is Rowena Pallas Leander-Warren. But I've always been called Pallas, after my great-grandmother. It's a daft name, Rowena." She bent down to inspect one of the dust-free framed pictures of Dudley, this one looking like a large bald potbellied pig on a tricycle. Her long blonde hair hid the expression on her face, which Harry regretted somewhat. It was quite a treat to have someone else in Number 4 who had nearly the same opinion as Dudley as he did.  
  
"Well that's all right then. Are you a witch?"  
  
For the second time in two days he was pinned by the full intensity of Pallas's icy glare. Her pupils expanded until they nearly touched the black rims of her blue eyes. Harry flinched. It was quite as bad as staring down a hippogriff. "What," she said coldly, "do you mean by that?"  
  
"I mean can you do magic? And stop looking at me like that, it's quite frightening."  
  
Pallas looked down at her long thin fingers, her hair once more hiding the expression on her face. "Mum's not a witch, so I can't be," she said quietly. "But I've got a mad aunt who killed herself a few years past, and she was a witch. I went to her funeral, and it was weird, people popping in and out all over the place. And I'm not sure, but my Gran had a broom in her closet that could sweep floors by itself. She might have been. But I've not seen her since I was very small, so I dunno."  
  
"I thought you might be, because the Ministry of Magic generally doesn't send letters to Muggles. You know, non-wizards."  
  
"Actually, I don't know, because I am a-a Muggle." Pallas made a face at the unfamiliarity of the word.  
  
Harry began to pace. "But if the letter was supposed to be sent to you, then you've got to be a witch. Rowena Ravenclaw was a witch."  
  
"You know, it's really starting to bother me how you automatically assume that I know what the bloody hell you're talking about," Pallas told him lightly, standing on tiptoe to examine the brightly polished trophy that was prominently displayed on the mantel. "Did he win this or did his dear daddy buy it for him?"  
  
"Won it. Don't ask Uncle Vernon about it. He'll never shut up." Harry glanced down at the letter once more, as though wishing that the words could explain to him what was going on. "I've got to ask someone about this." He turned to go up the stairs.  
  
Pallas caught him by the wrist. "Who?"  
  
"No one special," Harry said simply, hoping that it would satisfy her.  
  
"Who?" she asked again. The older boy had to suppress a groan. Apparently Pallas was one of those people who are never happy unless they know everything about a situation. He thought about lying but Pallas was watching him closely.  
  
"I don't know yet," he said quickly, and then rushed up the stairs. Pallas pounded after him, her hair swinging as she followed him into his room.  
  
Abruptly Harry saw it as Pallas did: scrolls of parchment protruding from his school bag, two broken quills and a heap of crumpled essays erupting from the trash can, and a four-foot tall stack of texts with names like The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Five, One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi and Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them. Hedwig was perched inside her cage and made a polite hooting noise at Harry as he entered.  
  
Pallas jumped a foot, unfortunately onto another owl that had been pecking around among the scattered items of Harry's Broom Repair Kit. The second owl screeched and took off, Pallas screamed and clasped her hands over her head, and Harry frantically jumped up to catch the letter the new owl was holding. She tripped over his Firebolt, which was hovering a foot off the ground, just as Harry seized the letter from the unfamiliar owl. With a thump that sounded far too loud to come from Pallas's slight frame, she fell into his school cauldron. There was a sucking noise and she vanished into it.  
  
Harry gasped and looked down into the cauldron, which recently had been brimful with about two liters of potion, now held Pallas with room to spare. She blinked up at him, her mouth set in the same unreadable way as when she'd told him to pull his head out of his ass. "What's going on?" she asked in a small voice. It was suddenly very clear that she was, after all, only twelve and a Muggle to boot.  
  
"Well, you're in my cauldron," Harry said, offering her a hand out. "And this is my room."  
  
She clambered up, brushing some unidentifiable white powder off her jeans and jersey. "It looks a bit smaller from out here," she said to herself, bending down to inspect the cauldron. Harry would have liked to examine this new and previously unknown aspect of his cauldron, but the letter was beginning to shake urgently in his hands.  
  
He opened it and started as a frankly mad old face jumped out at him. It was startlingly realistic and drawn in ink like the rough copy of a cartoon. "HEEERE'S WALDO!" the face screamed, the furry white eyebrows jumping over two eyes that pointed different directions. "And you must be.VLAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! Vlad the Impaler, sticks people on stick and sticks sticks into people and generally is just a sticky guy to play BAR-TABLE EUCHRE!" The man seemed to be mad or possibly deaf, the volume of his voice was altering rapidly from maniac shout to a nearly inaudible snicker.  
  
Pallas bent further over the cauldron, her hair over her face, but Harry strongly suspected she was laughing.  
  
"Where is she? Wherewherewherewherewhere WEREWOLVES! YOU KNOW I honestly think that she's gone over to the other side-there's nothing for it but HEY THERE'S GRAPEFRUIT FOR LUNCH TODAY AND I DON'T HAVE A SPOON!" The face vanished, leaving an ink-spattered message from Ron:  
  
"Real sorry about that, Harry, but the only parchment I can get a hold of in St. Mungos has already been used as a sort of behavior monitor for the more serious residents and when I stole some I must have gotten the maddest one of them all. Anyway, I overheard something while I was in here, and it's got to do with you. Hermione says I've got to tell you why we're here first, so my big news will have to wait.  
  
"Percy's gotten hurt. He won't tell us anything, mostly because he's being weird and shaking and stuff. He's been getting Shock Spells but I really don't see a difference. Mum and Dad are really worried about him, which I think is a little rich considering he's treated us like"-here there was a scribble over whatever word Ron had written-"for the past year.  
  
"Anyway, apparently Fudge is looking for Rowena Ravenclaw! There's this whole time thing that I don't understand (ask Hermione if you dare) but she's here and now and should be there and then. It's funny because they can't seem to find her, and Fudge is going spare. He's been to St. Mungos at least five times in the past two days. Though she's not admitting it, I think Mum enjoys watching him sweat for once.  
  
"Loony Lovegood's here too: apparently her father's promised that if she does an article on the conditions in St. Mungos he'll publish it for her. I really don't think Luna's quite cut out to be a reporter, because she's been here about an hour and all the staff avoids her already. She could give Rita a run for her money if this holds her attention long enough-but I doubt it will.  
  
"Luck with the Muggles, Ron."  
  
Harry put down the letter. Pallas was experimentally tossing things into his cauldron to see just how much it could hold: she had gotten most of his spell books and the contents of the trashcan inside with ease and was now lobbing Owl Treats into the mouth of the cauldron. "What's so funny?" she asked, dumping the rest of the Owl Treats in. "I bet you could pack the Tower of London in here and it wouldn't bust."  
  
"I don't think the spell can go that far," Harry replied. "The letter's from one of my friends, Ron. He was just telling me-"  
  
"The owl brought the letter?" Pallas asked curiously. "Like the Owl Post?"  
  
"Yes," Harry said with surprise. "How do you know-"  
  
"My mad aunt. She always sent us utterly strange letters by owl." Pallas overturned the cauldron with ease, allowing the ten or so spell-books and various paper wads and Owl Treats to fall to the floor. "This thing is really cool." She climbed inside once again. "I wonder how big this gets. What it this pot thing called again?"  
  
"It's a cauldron," Harry said absently, turning the letter over and over in his hand. "Do you think that you're Rowena Ravenclaw?"  
  
"Well, I don't know who Rowena Ravenclaw is," Pallas replied, her voice echoing from inside the cauldron. "So that's a bit of a hard question to answer." She popped her head out, her wavy blonde hair looking much more like when he had first met her. "Well, since I'm not a witch and have never heard of Hogwarts or magic or cauldrons that hold whatever you like, I'd have to say no." With a heave she rolled out of the cauldron and began inspecting the books. "And my mum definitely is NOT a witch. She's so lazy that I know she'd use magic if she could."  
  
With a sinking feeling Harry realized that he was breaking at least three of the Muggle Secrecy Acts by just having Pallas in his room. In fact, telling her about Rowena Ravenclaw and Hogwarts was about the most serious breach of the Code of International Secrecy that he could think of. "Er.really, you shouldn't be in here. It's kind of against the law." Pallas snorted and flipped open Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. "No, seriously. I think that the Ministry might have made a mistake sending you that letter and if they realize that you're not a witch then you'll get your memory erased."  
  
That got Pallas's attention. Her pupils expanded, and Harry once more got the feeling that he was staring down a particularly vicious hippogriff. "They're going to do what? They better not. Isn't that against the law?" She pushed a handful of waves out of her eyes and winced as she brushed one of the more violently colored bruises on her face.  
  
"Not when it comes to Muggles," Harry replied, trying to avoid her gaze. "Some wizards aren't too fond of Muggles."  
  
"Well that's dumb," Pallas said defiantly. "I'm scared shitless by the whole idea of someone coming to my house and running off with my memories, and they're worried about us?"  
  
"There are quite a lot more of you," he said, trying to be fair. He ducked down to peer under his bed, determined to find some parchment. This whole situation was getting out of hand far too fast: he really needed to write to someone. A list of possible people came to mind, capped by Albus Dumbledore and involving everyone from Minerva McGonagall to his best friend Ron Weasley. If Harry had had a choice, he would have written off to Sirius right away, but Sirius had died weeks ago. Sorrow, like a punch to the stomach, made Harry's gut clench.  
  
"Well I can't think much of your Ministry if they're telling us normal people that we're witches when we aren't, and especially if they're afraid of us when they've got bloody wands," Pallas said practically. "Do these things really exist?" she asked, pointing at a diagram of a Puffskein. "And do they seriously eat your bogeys while you sleep?"  
  
Harry tore off the bottom of a botched essay and pulled out a quill and ink. He paused with his quill poised over the parchment. "I dunno. My friend Ron had one once but it died."  
  
"How did it die?" she asked curiously, flipping to the next page. Her eyes flashed back and forth almost as fast as Hermione's. "They look pretty well padded to me. What's a Beater?"  
  
He didn't answer. Instead he began his letter.  
  
Dear Remus,  
  
Author's Note-Chapter two and still no reviews. I question the sanity of little-known yet prolific authors. How do they stand it? Well, I'm just going to keep posting until my brain bleeds dry. So fin chapter two. 


	3. Grimmauld Place Once More

Chapter Three: Grimmauld Place once more  
  
It took three days for Lupin to reply to Harry's letter, during which the boy saw Pallas once. The circumstances of their third meeting were much worse than the previous two.  
  
Pallas's father, a tall, thin, mostly bald man with a very large nose and watery gray eyes, had appeared on Number Four's doorstep with Dudley's shirt collar in one hand and his daughter's reluctant arm in the other. Dudley's nose was crooked and bleeding massively down his shirtfront, and Pallas was holding her other arm crooked awkwardly at her side like a chicken's wing, her gray blazer torn and dirty. A thin line of blood was trickling down her face from the place Dudley had grabbed on to her hair, and a fresh bruise was rising around her eye. Without bothering to knock, Mr. Leander threw Dudley through the screen door and onto the coatroom floor.  
  
Aunt Petunia screamed from the kitchen and rushed into the front of the house, her pale eyes wide as she took in the damage to her front door as well as the damage done to Dudley's face. "Diddy!" she screamed.  
  
Uncle Vernon nearly upset his chair getting up from watching the news, his mustache bristling walrus-like at this most unwelcome intruder. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded, stepping over his wife and son to confront Mr. Leander through the smashed screen door.  
  
"I'll tell you what the meaning is!" Mr. Leander growled back. "Your great ape of a son and his friends just beat the holy hell out of my daughter, that's what." He gave Pallas a little shake. She gasped and went white, clutching her arm more tightly to her chest. "What kind of people are you? Raisin' a criminal in your house!"  
  
Uncle Vernon glanced back at Harry, obviously very confused. He took in Dudley's broken nose with his piggy little eyes, and then looked back at Pallas. She gave him the Look with her good eye. Uncle Vernon looked away, his face twisted in rage and irritation that he didn't understand what was going on. "Well look what she did to my son! Broke his nose if I'm not right!"  
  
"Damn right I did," Pallas snapped. "Right after he broke my bloody arm!"  
  
Mr. Leander's watery eyes gave Pallas a warning glare only slightly less potent than her own. "Hush, child. If I'm not mistaken, this isn't the first time your son and my daughter have been in a fight."  
  
Uncle Vernon looked sharply at Dudley, whose fading black eye was still very visible in his fat face. "Ah," he said, but this time his tone promised trouble for Dudley as well as for Mr. Leander. "Well I'm sure this can all be worked out, if you'll just come inside Mr...?"  
  
"Leander," the balding man replied, releasing his hold on Pallas's arm and stepping through the hole in the screen door. His small eyes, set wide in his bony face, flashed to Harry standing half-hidden on the stairs. "And this would be the infamous Harry Potter."  
  
The hair on Harry's arms stood straight up. Did this man—a Muggle—know who he was? Was Mr. Leander even a Muggle? What had Pallas told her family? The thought of trying to explain what he had told this Muggle girl to the Wizengamot made Harry's blood run cold. He considered streaking upstairs to post another letter to Lupin, but then he said—  
  
"I suppose having him home for the summer puts a strain on your family," Mr. Leander continued to Uncle Vernon, stepping around Aunt Petunia so that he and Harry's uncle could continue their arrangement in the kitchen. Aunt Petunia was shooting filthy looks at Pallas, who had followed her father inside and now stood looking around like she'd never seen the house before. She was also shedding drops of blood onto the flawless ecru carpeting.  
  
Harry cleared his throat and jerked his head up the stairs, but Pallas only looked at him vaguely, watching him as if he were a piece of interestingly mussed carpeting. Once Aunt Petunia had ushered Dudley off to the bathroom (with another dirty look at the girl soiling her rug), Pallas gave Harry another Look. While with both eyes this look made Harry want to pull a blanket over his soul, with one eye it only made him more irritated at her.  
  
"What're you always fighting with Dudley for, anyhow?" he asked.  
  
"He started it. And if you haven't noticed, I'm definitely worse off in this one," she said scaldingly. "Not that Father's noticed at all." Delicately, she stepped around Dudley's small lake of blood on the linoleum and sat down in one of the decidedly uncomfortable armchairs. "So. Had any more letters?"  
  
"Not one," Harry replied. "Though the man I wrote to might not be in the country right now."  
  
Pallas nodded sagely, wiping the trickle of blood off her face. "Remus Lupin? Does he work for your government?"  
  
"Er—not exactly," Harry said, taken aback by Pallas remembering who he had written to. He wasn't sure that he'd told her. "He works for a man who's a sort of...rival to the government—wait, that's not the right word—he's above the government. The head of the movement against..." Harry trailed off as he realized that not only was Pallas not supposed to know anything about Voldemort, Mr. Leander was in the next room.  
  
She gave him a mildly disgusted version of the Look and shook her head. "Sometimes I half hope that I really am Rowena Ravenclaw, just so that you can finish your sentences around me." With a sigh she leaned back into the chair, keeping her right arm clenched tightly to her skinny torso. Harry watched her for a moment, wondering what if—just what if, a simple thought that had no purpose in his mind—this coltish girl-child could be one of the four Founders of Hogwarts. With a pained sigh Pallas closed her eyes, her forehead wrinkled in what looked like irritation. Impatiently she swiped a handful of blonde waves behind her ear and looked across at Harry. "Were you telling the truth, that day we met, when you said you were famous?"  
  
Harry was once again blindsided by the girl. "Did I? How odd." He tried to keep an innocent expression, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew that it was no use. With a remorseful sigh he dug his hands deeper into his pockets. "In the wizarding world I am, but here I'm less than no one."  
  
"Don't be so humble, it's sickening." When he opened his mouth to protest, Pallas waved her unhurt arm at him with disdain. "If this is another one of those things that you can't tell me, I understand." Even so, she looked rather disgruntled as she resettled her arm on her chest with a wince. "Anyway, am I right to assume that you are, in fact, a wizard, and this Lupin fellow you've written to is a wizard as well?"  
  
Harry nodded. "Yes. He's actually quite brilliant—taught at my school once."  
  
This statement brought their conversation to a grinding halt. Their rules stipulated that Pallas could not ask about Hogwarts, and Harry couldn't tell. There was a heavy silence, in which Pallas twirled her hair around her fingers while examining the portraits of beach-ball-baby Dudley with a small sneer on her bruised face. Harry peered across into the dining room, where tall, thin Mr. Leander made anger and threat gestures at Uncle Vernon, who in turn blurted "What about Dudley, eh? That nose isn't going to be cheap to fix!"  
  
Aunt Petunia sniffled loudly from the top of the stairs. "Imagine," she said indignantly. Without turning around, Harry knew that her bony hands were on her hips, and that her thin lips were pursed over her long teeth. In all likelihood, she would have Dudley in the upstairs bathroom with a dark-colored towel held under his nose to stop the bleeding. She was probably coming downstairs to get some ice.  
  
"Get out of my way, boy," she commanded tersely, and went into the kitchen. There was a pause in the arguing as Aunt Petunia opened the icebox and placed a good pound of ice into a plastic bag.  
  
Harry grinned. Living with predictable people had its upsides, one being entertainment.  
  
"What?" Pallas growled from the chair. Her face, beneath the fresh black eye and various green and yellow old bruises, was steadily draining of blood.  
  
"I wasn't laughing at you," Harry said defensively. "Are you--?"  
  
"I'm fine," she said tersely. There was another lengthy silence, in which Pallas examined Harry with her good eye. He pretended not to notice, instead examining the hair-fine white scars on the back of his right hand. I MUST NOT TELL LIES. The words that had been forced into him by Dolores Umbridge bothered him now more than ever now that he was lying to Pallas on a daily basis.  
  
He wasn't sure if not saying anything counted as lying—but it felt like it, sitting silently here while Pallas stared questions at his head. A quick stab of memory caught him unawares: the bewildered feelings of an eleven year old boy, trying to understand this new world of broomsticks and hippogriffs with only a few friends to guide him. Harry barely felt connected to that very young, very innocent boy. He understood his new world all too well, and was that much farther from what Pallas was feeling now. She was only twelve, after all.  
  
I MUST NOT TELL LIES.  
  
"What's that on your hand?" Pallas asked, her hair veiling her face. "That scar."  
  
"It's nothing..." Harry began, and then trailed off. I MUST NOT TELL LIES. "Well, it's from when I had to do lines last year." He moved closer so that she could examine it with her good hand. Pallas's long fingers gently traced the five scripted words, obviously very puzzled by them. "I had this utter monster of a teacher, and she had this special quill that makes you write lines in your own blood." Her eyes widened, visible even through her hair.  
  
"What a bitch!" Pallas exclaimed. "That can't be legal, even in a witch's world."  
  
"What's that, Pallas?"  
  
They sprang apart guiltily, Harry sliding his hand out of slight and Pallas gasping in pain from her broken arm. Her face was the color of raw celery. "Daddy," she said plaintively, "I think my arm's broken." With a sniffle and a rather false jerking sob, her eyes began to fill. "It really hurts!"  
  
Mr. Leander's small eyes narrowed until they resembled pockmarks on either side of his nose. "Dursley..." he growled.  
  
"I'm keeping my end of the bargain," Uncle Vernon snapped back. "Boy! Get upstairs."  
  
Harry thought for a moment about defying his uncle's order, but a boar-like snort from Uncle Vernon and a particularly ferocious Look from Pallas squashed the idea. He retreated to the top of the stairs, just far enough so that he was out of sight but could still hear what was happening below.  
  
"All right—Leander, you and your daughter, get in the car so I can drive you to the hospital." Uncle Vernon left loudly, his mustache bristling with each exhale.  
  
There was a faint glint of blonde hair from the living room and Mr. Leander's cold voice: "He's not the one sending you funny mail, is he?"  
  
"Of course not, Daddy. We've not spoken before." Pallas's voice radiated an innocence that Harry was sure was overdone. "He goes to St. Brutus's, doesn't he?"  
  
"He does," Mr. Leander agreed briefly. "Hardened criminal, or so the neighbors say."  
  
A hand descended on Harry's shoulder. He twisted to look and gasped aloud.  
  
Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Minerva McGonagall were standing in the upstairs hallway, their faces very grim. Lupin looked as well as Harry had ever seen him, his robes obviously new over his battered sweater and jeans. Tonks was fiddling with one of her long, sapphire-blue curls, her black eyes bright and creased at the corners, and Professor McGonagall looked a bit like a stern magistrate in a high- collared black shirt and black robes. Kingsley was holding his wand like a sword, his wide mouth thin and white.  
  
"Potter! Is Rowena here?" Professor McGonagall asked sharply, leaning heavily on her walking stick. Seeing Harry's momentarily confused look, she rolled her eyes. "Er...Pallas, is that what they're calling her?"  
  
"Yes, but—"  
  
"We've got to move fast," Tonks interrupted him. "If she's been raised by Muggles it may be difficult to bring her with us."  
  
"Look, I've got to tell—"  
  
"But we can't be too frightening," Kingsley reminded them. "She's only a child."  
  
"She's not—"  
  
Professor McGonagall turned and gave Harry a severe look, which before now would have made him shut up immediately. Perhaps Pallas's hippogriff eyes had numbed him a bit, because instead he blurted, "She's not a witch."  
  
There was a blank silence. "What on earth is that supposed to mean, Potter?" Professor McGonagall asked, her beady eyes calculating. "How can she not be a witch?"  
  
"She's not. I met her less than a week ago and I've done a bit of poking around and she's never made anything happen, she didn't receive a letter from Hogwarts—"  
  
"Of course she wouldn't have, not if she Founded Hogwarts!" Tonks exclaimed a little too loudly. There was a pause in the conversation downstairs.  
  
"—don't worry, Mr. Leander, Dudley must have left his television on." Though this line had helped Uncle Vernon out of a similar situation, the mention of Dudley brought fresh ice to their already chilly conversation.  
  
"Please shut up," Lupin said politely to the younger woman. "Harry, I'm not trying to question your judgment—but the man who found Rowena—that is, Pallas—is one of the best scryers known to wizard kind. He's never been wrong."'  
  
"He's not right this time," Harry said stubbornly. "Plus, she's got a mum and a dad, and if you lot just kidnap her"—Professor McGonagall and Lupin exchanged looks—"there's going to be questioning and things." Tonks looked as if she were thinking of contradicting him, but thought better. "And don't try to tell me you aren't kidnapping her, because you are."  
  
"Harry, ordinarily you'd be right, but this is different," Kingsley said slowly. "If we don't take this girl back to where she belongs, then our whole world could unravel."  
  
"I always said we shouldn't mess with time," Lupin said, the lines around his mouth deepening.  
  
Harry was sorely tempted to point out that a Time-Turner had saved Sirius's life almost three years before, but realized that not only would it be rude, it would also mean that Hermione and Harry would be dragged in front of the Wizengamot for illegal use of a Time-Turner. With a growing sense of total helplessness, Harry slouched lower on the stair. "She won't be happy about this."  
  
"Just don't interfere with it, Harry. It's something that has to be done."  
  
~  
  
Pallas did not speak to him at all on the Knight Bus. She sat on the floor out of sliding-furniture range, her right arm still clenched across her chest though Lupin had splinted it for her. Her eyes were fixed down at a letter Professor McGonagall had handed her before she, Lupin, Tonks, Kingsley and Harry had left Number Four with Pallas in tow. Harry had half- expected her to cry—but her face was very blank.  
  
Though, considering the scene that had just passed, she really had every right to be mad at him.  
  
Lupin and Kingsley had Stunned Mr. Leander and Uncle Vernon, modified their memories, and grabbed Pallas before she could scream. When McGonagall accidentally seized her broken right arm, Pallas had yelled loud enough to bring Aunt Petunia and Dudley out of the upstairs bathroom. McGonagall Stunned Aunt Petunia, but was spared the necessity of Stunning Dudley when the portly boy screamed and crawled back into the bathroom with one hand over his massive denim-clad behind. Harry hid a chuckle behind his hand as McGonagall's stern mouth worked to hide a grin.  
  
Pallas twisted in Kingsley's grip. "Harry?" she asked in her most strangely calm voice. "What's going on?"  
  
Harry shrugged, still with a rather gleeful grin on his lips at Dudley's retreat, and then realized that Pallas must think that he was grinning at the situation she was in and straightened his features to solemnity.  
  
"You knew about this," Pallas whispered.  
  
Harry shook his head. "I swear I didn't, honest to God..."  
  
"You knew!" she cried accusingly.  
  
Lupin pointed his wand at Pallas's broken arm and a splint wound itself up her arm. She jumped and looked up at him with her eyes narrowed. "Don't you dare erase my memory," she growled.  
  
"We're not going to erase your memory, girl," Professor McGonagall snapped.  
  
"Then what are you doing?" she asked, shooting her hippogriff look at Harry. He felt quite guilty, though none of the events were his fault. "Why are you here?"  
  
"This isn't the time or the place for such explanations," the elderly professor said, lifting Pallas to her feet with difficulty. "Come with me, Rowena—Pallas."  
  
Kingsley helped Professor McGonagall drag the resisting girl out to the Knight Bus and had to stop just short of throwing her inside—she was resisting admirably and planted an excellent uppercut on the big black man, making Stan Shunpike gape at her with nearly the same awe he used when Harry was on the bus.  
  
"C'mon, Harry," said Tonks as she boarded. "We're off to Grimmauld Place. I've left a letter for your aunt and uncle. So. Coming?" When Harry hesitated, she sighed and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I got your stuff ready when you were downstairs." Harry willingly boarded the bus, but felt like jumping right off when he saw Pallas, alone and pale at the rear of the bus.  
  
It had been at least twenty minutes, and Pallas was still staring at the letter.  
  
McGonagall was watching her like a hawk, beady eyes almost unblinking as she studied the girl that had helped found her beloved Hogwarts. Harry wondered what the stern Transfiguration teacher was thinking about, and realized that he was starting to think of Pallas as Rowena Ravenclaw.  
  
That can't be right. She's just a kid. If she's Rowena Ravenclaw, then Hogwarts is utterly doomed.  
  
"Are you a witch, child?" McGonagall asked Pallas. The girl gave the professor her most potent Look Harry had yet seen, and for a few seconds they locked eyes before Pallas looked down and away, her hair falling over her face.  
  
There was a long and rather uncomfortable silence that lasted until the Knight Bus stopped outside the entrance to Grimmauld Place. "C'mon," Tonks said, lifting Pallas to her feet with ease. Kingsley got off the bus before he could be asked to help with the twelve-year old—his jaw was a little swollen and he had watched Pallas warily for most of the trip.  
  
Harry nearly jumped off the bus, eager to see Ron and Hermione again. He was pretty sure that they would be there: the Weasley's had made Grimmauld Place their second home since the previous summer. Now that Percy was in the hospital, it stood to reason that they would be living for the time being. The though of Percy brought a sick sort of irritation that ran deep. Not only had the third-eldest Weasley sold out on his family, he had also written a letter to Ron advising him to get as far away from Harry as possible. In fact, Harry didn't feel the least bit sorry for Percy, but was very curious as to who or what had injured his least favorite Weasley.  
  
As he stared at the space between Number 11 and Number 13, waiting for Number 12 to push its way into existence, he heard the distinct noises of Pallas refusing to do something, the sharp sounds of McGonagall insisting, closely followed by one of the scuffles Harry had begun to associate with his temperamental acquaintance. He tried hard not to sigh with relief when Sirius's old home came into view and he could go inside. Talking to Ron and Hermione would be a welcome exercise after the past few hours.  
  
Unfortunately, Ron and Hermione were at St. Mungos at the moment. In fact, they were exactly one floor below and two rooms over from one Waldo Tribune, who was trying desperately to find something he had misplaced, aided and hampered by the contradicting advice he was getting from himself.  
  
"Over there! It's over there, you fool!"  
  
"No, underneath the lamp!"  
  
"Not the lamp, look at those National Geographic's!"  
  
"I could have sworn that if I turned to the right a little more then I could see it."  
  
"What exactly is it I'm looking for?"  
  
"The—buggered if I know."  
  
"What precisely does the word buggered mean, any how?"  
  
After half an hour of this utter nonsense, the Healer on duty took it upon herself to Stun Waldo before he realized that he'd been looking for his left hand. This peculiar and little-seen object had been tied to Waldo's bedrail for the past month, but since the mad old man had decided that, while on holiday in New York, a rhinoceros had gouged out his left eye, so he obviously could not see it. The Healer didn't have the heart to tell Waldo that his left eye was fine and he'd never been to New York in his life, so she let him rant and occasionally shut him up when he became too annoying.  
  
Meanwhile, Troy was wading through a series of notes made by Waldo, trying to find the defining attributes of Rowena Ravenclaw. It was horribly frustrating because the notes usually made very little sense, with an occasional breach to useful information. The reason Troy had been plunged back into the documented wasteland that was Waldo was because a very irritating and inconvenient thing had happened.  
  
Pallas Warren had had more than one great-granddaughter. In fact, she'd had six.  
  
There was only one Rowena Ravenclaw, however, so Troy was left with the undesirable task of finding physical and mental attributes among Waldo's notes to narrow the six down. One was too old and another was a Squib, and one had been killed in a house fire four years before. That left three who lived in England and had blonde hair and magical talent. Three who were under sixteen. Three who could possibly be Rowena.  
  
With a sigh Troy rested his forehead on the desk, his babyish features desperate. This was getting out of hand. 


	4. Rory

Chapter Four: Rory  
  
The mood at number twelve Grimmauld Place had hit rock bottom since the death of the last Black, Sirius. The house gave the impression that it knew he had died, seeming to sag heavily into the foundation. Even Mrs. Black's portrait seemed to realize that her son had met his final match. When awakened, she would either jeer about Sirius or scream that the end of the world was near, for the line of Black had ended. The very air felt heavy and depressing. Harry spent most of his first day lying inside the bedroom he had shared with Ron, staring blankly out the window.  
  
It was almost eight o'clock that night when Harry heard a knock on the door.  
  
"Come in," he called absently, sitting up.  
  
He turned as a thin black woman he had never seen before enter, balancing a tray of food in one hand and holding a dish of birdseed in the other. She was dressed in a floor-length Muggle skirt and a button-down shirt, both covered in paint, belted snugly at her waist. A polished wand was stuck into the belt at the small of her back. Her silver hair hung pin-straight around a very young face—she was probably in her mid-twenties. One of her up-tilted eyes was brown, the other was gray.  
  
"So are you wanting any dinner?" she asked quietly, placing the tray down on the nightstand. "Mrs. Weasley said you was not quite up to dinner downstairs, and I can see she was right." She smiled kindly. "You'll be Harry Potter?" Her voice was soft and uncultured; she spoke with broad vowels and nearly skipped H's.  
  
Harry nodded. "Thank you for the food." Part of him wanted to keep talking to her—she was almost restfully ordinary, compared to everyone else—but it was a very small part. He didn't really want to keep talking; he didn't really want to ever talk again.  
  
"You're welcome, little master," she replied. "If you be needing anything, just ask for Rory." Rory turned to leave, her silver hair swirling.  
  
"How long have you been here?" Harry asked. "I've never met you before."  
  
Rory leaned against the fireplace conversationally. "Your godfather, bless the man, hired me just after Christmas to keep up the house. My mother served here, you know. Liadan O'Ciardha. I suspect old Mrs. Black drove her to her death, but then I've always been luckier with employers. Sirius Black was one the best men I've ever known." She crossed herself absently. "And you'll be wanting to be alone for a bit, so if you'll tell me where to put this I'll be going." Rory gestured with the jar of birdseed.  
  
Harry pointed wordlessly at Hedwig's cage on top of the wardrobe. Rory nodded and stood on tiptoe to place the birdseed into the bottom of the cage. She dropped a small curtsey and was gone. Harry picked through the tray, but nothing really appealed to him. He ate a dinner roll and drank a glass of pumpkin juice, but they tasted like glue on his tongue. With a heavy sigh he rolled towards the wall and drifted into restless sleep.  
  
He was awakened by two bony knees pressing into his back, one on either side of his spine. With a groan muffled by his pillow, Harry swatted at whoever was sitting on him, and found his arm seized and pinned behind him. Harry realized with vast irritation that he knew who it was.  
  
"Pallas?"  
  
"For god's sake, are you going to sleep forever?" Pallas demanded. "Get up!"  
  
"That's rather difficult, considering the present situation." She shifted her weight off him and onto the side of the bed. "What time is it?"  
  
"Six o'clock. I've been up for three hours and I can't do anything because they say I might disappear or something." Harry rolled over and saw, to his astonishment, that Pallas was wearing wizard's robes over her holey jeans and the snarls had been combed out of her long hair. "Doesn't anyone get up before six anymore?"  
  
"Not on holiday!" Harry replied. "Why can't you go talk to Rory or Mrs. Weasley or someone other than me?"  
  
Pallas looked politely blank. "I can't tell anyone apart here. You lot all dress the same."  
  
"What about Rory—the housekeeper?"  
  
"Well, except for her. She's nice. Not really much for information, though." Harry pushed himself upright with a groan, scrubbed at his eyes with his fists, and swung his feet over the side of the bed. "One of the redheads gave me these. Do you all wear these things all the time? They're dead clumsy." She lifted her arms so that the black robes swung out like wings. "No wonders all of we Muggles think you lot wear pointy hats and nonsense. It's because you really do."  
  
"Not all the time, no," Harry replied, trying to mask his irritation about the early hour and her endless chatter. "And I don't wear a pointy hat. Has anyone else arrived?"  
  
Pallas shot a moody glance at the door. "I dunno. Somebody locked it."  
  
Harry got up and tested the door. The knob gave easily under his touch, and the door swung open quietly—which was odd, considering that the doors of number twelve usually gave a metallic screech of protest. He raised his eyebrows at Pallas and walked down the hall. It wasn't until he was halfway down the stairs that he realized that Pallas was not following him. Harry looked up and back down the hall and saw that the door to his room had closed again—and Pallas was nowhere in sight.  
  
With a sigh he retraced his steps and opened the door.  
  
"You know, where I come from doors have manners," Pallas snapped at the door, which made only a few smug squeaking noises as Harry led Pallas out of the room. "And even if I am a Muggle, that door should back off or I'll chop it into toothpicks!" The door slammed shut and there was a haughty click as it locked them out. "Don't think that'll stop me!" she shouted, planting a solid kick in the middle of the door.  
  
"C'mon, you'll wake everyone else up," Harry said, dragging the younger girl down the stairs. "Try not to offend any more doors."  
  
"Oh?" Pallas growled, "Should I worry about upsetting the wallpaper and the dust mites and the portraits as well? How about the rugs? Do they object strenuously to being walked on? Should I just wave my magic wand and float or something so as not to offend them?  
  
"Is anything in this house normal?" she asked with a little quiver in her voice.  
  
"Shut up, please," Harry hissed as they approached the first floor landing. "There's a portrait down a ways who you do not want to wake up." Pallas looked very confused, but nodded. As they tiptoed past the sleeping portraits (Pallas jumping each time one snored) Harry sent a silent prayer to whoever might be listening: Please let Mrs. Black not wake up.  
  
Apparently God was on his day off, because Pallas, upon seeing the troll's leg trash can, bent to inspect it and let out the loudest, most powerful sneeze ever heard to mankind. It echoed in the still house, followed by the crash made by Pallas hitting the ground as surprise and snot knocked her backwards. "Sorry!" she called, almost lost in the shouts of "MUDBLOODS! TRAITORS! FILTH!" that resounded from attic to kitchen.  
  
Rory ran up from the kitchen, her silver hair bound in a tight bun, and grasped a curtain in an effort to force Mrs. Black to sleep again. "Help me!" she ordered, and Harry seized the other side and tried to close it. The curtain fought like living things, pushing against Harry with a force that he would have expected to come from Hagrid. Pallas, in an effort to help, seized both curtains and tried to jerk them together. Unfortunately, this put her right in the center of Mrs. Black's gaze.  
  
"YOOOOOOOOUUU!" she howled, stretching out clawed hands to grab at the young girl's face. "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! SCUM! DEFILER OF THE HOUSE OF MY FATHERS! FILTH! SCUM!"  
  
Pallas flushed red to the roots of her fair hair. "You wicked old bitch!" she shouted back. "SHUT UP!"  
  
Perhaps it was the fact that no one but Sirius had ever yelled back at Mrs. Black, or perhaps it was surprise that momentarily stunned the portrait, but suddenly Harry felt the curtains give and heaved them together as hard as he could. His knuckles banged painfully against Rory's, and there was a ringing silence in the hall.  
  
"I am not filth," Pallas said defiantly. "And she's a fright. Who is she?"  
  
"Previous owner of this house," Rory replied, smoothing her silver hair back into its knot. "Come on, little masters. I've got breakfast started down below." She descended the stairs with a straight-backed stride that reminded Harry of Professor McGonagall.  
  
"That explains why I don't like this house," the younger girl grumbled to Harry as they followed the housekeeper.  
  
"It used to be worse. The garbage cans used to belch after you threw away parchment." Pallas's eyes rounded. "That's not the worst of it. When Ron and Hermione get back from St. Mungos we can tell you the horror stories."  
  
To the surprise of both, they were not alone in their early rising hour. Remus Lupin was there, as was a fair-skinned woman with dark red hair that Harry had never met. Rory smiled at both of them, but only the woman smiled back. Lupin was watching the pleasant housekeeper with something bordering on mistrust, but he greeted the two younger adults pleasantly.  
  
"Good morning Harry, Pallas. I don't think you've met a recent friend of ours—this is Eponine Noirclair." He gestured to the pale woman, who smiled at both of them warmly, her eyes brushing over Harry's scar before fixing on Pallas.  
  
"So, you are ze little girl 'oo is founding 'Ogwarts," Eponine said, hazel eyes raking her from head to foot. "You are in Ravenclaw, I presume?"  
  
Pallas gave her a blank look. "I don't go to Hogwarts. That's for wizards."  
  
Eponine laughed like a ripple of harp strings. "Ah, leetle girl, you are a funny one. Of course you are a witch. Are you going to Beauxbatons? Durmstrang?" Pallas smiled politely and said nothing. Which, Harry thought as he sat down and received a plate of toast and eggs from Rory, was distinctly out of character. He could hardly remember a time when Pallas had been polite without making up for it later.  
  
The thought was driven out of his head by the fireplace flaring up to the ceiling and turning bright green. Six people stumbled out of it: six Weasley's and Hermione, who rushed over and hugged Harry as soon as she blinked the soot out of her eyes.  
  
"Harry! It's lovely to see you!" Harry grinned up at her as another head appeared over her shoulder, this one red-haired and very freckly.  
  
"Any chance of breakfast, Rory?" Ron asked, tousling Harry's hair before seizing a plate of eggs from the laughing housekeeper.  
  
"I always know to make extras when the Weaselys are in London," she joked as she handed plates out to Bill, Fred, Ginny, and George, who were all very sooty and grinning like maniacs. The twins sat on across from Harry and Luna, brushing dust from their dragon-hide jackets.  
  
"Rory makes the best breakfasts," Fred informed them, digging a fork into his eggs.  
  
"Apart from mum, of course, but it's the competition that makes for better and better food around this place," George added, shooting a look towards the other end of the table, where Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were holding a quiet conversation with Rory and Lupin. All four adults looked very grave.  
  
"What's up with them? Is it Percy?" Harry asked, glancing across at Hermione and them at Ron, who had sat on Harry's other side.  
  
Ginny shrugged mulishly. "Percy's been a bit—odd."  
  
"He hasn't spoken at all yet," Hermione elaborated. "He just sits in bed and shakes." She took a bite of toast, her forehead wrinkled in thought. "I'm not sure he knows who we are."  
  
"Speaking of which, who are you?" Fred asked with his mouth full, pointing his fork at Pallas.  
  
She started, and then went back to shuffling her eggs around. "Pallas Leander," she muttered to her plate.  
  
"So you're the girl Fudge's—ouch!" Ron grunted at Harry elbowed him in the side. Pallas didn't bother to hide her grin.  
  
Hermione cast an appraising look at the younger girl. Knowing Hermione, she probably knew all about the Rowena business and was computing some way to overlap time so that she could travel back to pre-Hogwarts time and compare it with Hogwarts, a History and then write a seventeen-roll essay comparing and contrasting the two views. Harry suppressed a grin. Yes, that was a very Hermione-ish thing to do.  
  
Pallas let her hair fall over her face and began forking up eggs. "Who's Fudge?" she asked Harry out of the corner of her mouth once Fred and George had begun a new conversation with Ron and Ginny, and Hermione had vanished behind that morning's Daily Prophet. A large article with the heading FUDGE RUNS FOR RE-ELECTION, OPPOSED BY EDWARD FOLDHAVERS covered her face entirely.  
  
"Minister of Magic. He's a real idiot." Harry pointed to the picture of Fudge on the cover of the Prophet. He was wearing his bowler hat, which, though the picture didn't show it, was lime green.  
  
A piece of egg fell off her fork and landed on the plate. "I know him!" she exclaimed excitedly. "He's the one who showed up at my door a few days past!"  
  
Hermione put down her paper. "Fudge went looking for you?" she asked.  
  
"All this time I thought he was looking for Harry and now it turns out he's looking for me!" Pallas said with disgust. "Bloody hell, if he's running your government then you are all doomed."  
  
"Why didn't he take you in then?" Harry asked curiously.  
  
"Because he had a nice talk with my mother," Pallas said with a grin. "I think she scared him." She slurped up a whole egg then caught sight of the mystified expressions all around her. "She lives in this recliner chair and wears giant yellow and pink striped pajamas at all times. The only times she gets up are to slap somebody around or to bellow at door-to-door salespeople." George and Fred laughed. Pallas smiled back at them and continued: "She's got a mean right hook—it's thanks to her that I duck as fast as I do."  
  
"Not that that's done you much good," Harry retorted. She made a face.  
  
"Yea, how'd you get all beat up?" Ron asked with his mouth full.  
  
"His bloody cousin," Pallas said with heavy overtones of disgust. "Dudley Dursley."  
  
The mention of Dudley sent Fred and George into fits of laughter. With only a little encouragement from Harry and Ron they told the whole story of the Ton-Tongue Toffee to Pallas, who was a very good audience and laughed hard at the idea of Dudley with a four-foot tongue. Even Hermione—who had only seen Dudley at a distance when the Dursleys picked up Harry at the end of term—nearly upset a pitcher of orange juice on herself when Fred began doing an impression of Dudley choking on his own tongue.  
  
"Dudley, dear!" George wailed in a high-pitched imitation of Aunt Petunia. He tackled Fred. "Let's get that thing out of your mouth!" With much squealing and rather questionable gestures, George attempted to pull Dudley's (that is, Fred's) tongue out. By this time everyone was watching: Mr. and Mrs. Weasley with mild disgust masking their smiles, Lupin laughing with Bill, and Eponine observing the twins with her elegant eyebrows arched.  
  
"Boys," Mr. Weasley said in an effort to get his sons under control. "You know how I feel about Muggle-baiting."  
  
"Sir?" asked Pallas. Eponine's gray eyes snapped to the younger girl. "What exactly is Muggle-baiting?"  
  
Mr. Weasley frowned a little, but he answered cheerfully. "Oh, you know, biting doorknobs, shrinking house keys, regurgitating toilets, the like. Just particularly immature wizards having a spot of fun with Muggles."  
  
"Oh," said Pallas, and she went back to her breakfast without another word. Harry glanced at her a few moments later and saw that her face was flushed tomato red all the way to her hairline. He caught Ron and Hermione's eyes and gestured that they should meet him upstairs. There was no way Harry was going to witness another Pallas explosion this early in the morning.  
  
~  
  
"Here you are, young lady. Just sign here."  
  
Elizabeth smiled charmingly up at the Ministry official and signed, hardly glancing at the paper. She knew perfectly well what it said, and she wasn't going to read it again. Instead she concentrated on disconcerting the man who had come to her doorway, which was a lot easier than she let on. Elizabeth was a pretty and curvy girl, with well-cut blonde curls and wide blue eyes. She was also a witch, and the reason she was signing the paper in the first place was because her great-grandmother was named Pallas Warren.  
  
With another little tilt of her head she retreated inside and shut the door. Elizabeth let out a sigh of happiness. She'd always know that she was better than some miner's daughter. It was as though her wildest dreams had been fulfilled, even if an overweight man in ill-fitting trousers had fulfilled them. She was Rowena Ravenclaw, the most important witch in over a thousand years.  
  
"Lizzie, darling, who was at the door?" a quivery old voice called from the living room.  
  
"No one special, grandmamma," Elizabeth replied innocently. "He was only selling something." Stupid old bat, she thought to herself. Doesn't realize that she's borne a great witch—a demi-goddess, almost! With a wide grin she twirled in the hallway.  
  
Elizabeth Warren, known to all as Lisa, frowned at her granddaughter. She knew the little minx all too well, and Lisa had pretended to be half- crippled for years. Lisa knew that many things were said more loudly when the person who was not supposed to hear them was supposedly stone-deaf.  
  
"Lizzie!" she persisted. "Have you heard from Geraldine at all?"  
  
"Grandmamma, Auntie Geraldine's been dead for years," Elizabeth said loudly, walking into the room with her angel's face on. Lisa did have to admit, she was a beauty. Of course, Elizabeth knew that. "Her husband hasn't written in months."  
  
"Codswallop," Lisa said with conviction. Though she was quite certain that her son-in-law was mad, she had high hopes for his only child, whom she had never met. "And what of Teresa? She is still alive, or last I heard." She made herself wheeze with laughter at the bad joke. "What of Teresa, my pet?"  
  
"Teresa has not written, grandmamma," Elizabeth said, her voice dripping patience. "Why don't you settle down and take a nice long nap until Mother comes home."  
  
"Alice isn't here?" said Lisa with real surprise. "Ah. I don't suppose Jim is here either."  
  
"No, he's at the mines."  
  
"Dear, dear," Lisa murmured as she settled down and let her eyes drift closed.  
  
Elizabeth ran into the kitchen and did a mad little dance of glee. It's only me and that other girl now. Teresa's a squib—her daughter's probably got about as much magical talent as a troll. Now the other girl, Geraldine's daughter...she's my age—or at least I think she is. Well, I'm obviously the more skilled witch. Anyone at Beauxbatons would vouch for me.  
  
"What on earth are you doing, Elizabeth?" asked a dry voice from the doorway that led to the bedrooms. "Is it my imagination or has your ambition driven you mad at last?" Athena, Elizabeth's older sister, came into the kitchen with her eyebrows hiked up. She was tall and athletic, with a classical face that would have driven any Greek sculptor into ecstasy. Unlike her younger sister, Athena wore her brown hair pulled up and had more of an interest in Quidditch than in snaring every man alive.  
  
"Shut up, you hag," Elizabeth said, flushing with embarrassment. "It's none of your business, anyhow."  
  
"Am I too old to be Rowena Ravenclaw, then?" asked Athena calmly. "I didn't think seventeen was that ancient until today."  
  
Elizabeth's jaw dropped, her carefully arranged features sliding unattractively out of line. "How—how—were you listening to me?"  
  
"It's a rather commonplace habit in this household."  
  
"But how?"  
  
"It's an old house. We haven't got much insulation, and there was a rather large heating duct right above your head when you were flirting with that Ministry official." Athena studied her nails and grinned slyly. "Nice of you to keep him there so long. I got a good look at that paper he was having you sign."  
  
The prickling red heat crept up Elizabeth's face until she could feel it tickling her hairline. "You utter bitch!" she shrieked in rage. "I hate you! I wish it had been you that died in the fire instead of Jamie!"  
  
Athena glanced up at her younger sister, her gray eyes very cold. "Do you?" she asked calmly. "Because Jamie would be your rival for this Rowena Ravenclaw business. She would be thirteen in a few weeks." When Elizabeth began to shake her head, she snapped, "Don't try to deny it, Elizabeth, I've read it in your face. Ambitious little hag." She turned slowly and walked back into her bedroom, as impassive as a statute.  
  
With a growl, Elizabeth planted a hefty kick on the stove, her pretty face twisted in anger. You've never been able to hide anything from Athena, a little voice in her head pointed out, adding a second later, nosey little Viking.  
  
But a little ray of light brought a smile to her face, and that was this: in three days she would be boarding a train to London. 


	5. Order Meeting

**Chapter 5: Order Meeting**  
  
"Look, just swish and flick. Like this." George demonstrated with his wand. "Swish and flick."  
  
Pallas raised her eyebrows as she swished and flicked Fred's wand. "Is something supposed to happen?"  
  
"Well, there are words to it. Repeat it after me: Wingardium Leviosa!" Fred said with gusto. The younger girl dutifully repeated it, a little less enthusiastically. The twins had been trying (rather unsuccessfully) to teach Pallas magic. Despite Harry pointing out that Pallas had not received a letter from Hogwarts, and Hermione pointing out that she was making the 'gar' too short in her incantation, the twins had insisted that she at least try.  
  
"Okay, now swish and flick and at the same time say 'Wingardium Leviosa'," George coached her. "And mind you point the wand away from people."  
  
Pallas screwed up her face and concentrated on the quill on the table in front of her. "Wingardium Leviosa!" she cried as she flicked and swished.  
  
"Oh no," sighed Hermione as the feather, instead of floating lightly upwards like it was supposed to, flew upwards in the same way bricks do not.  
  
"Ouch," Pallas grumbled. "Did someone breath too hard?"  
  
"Well, it did move," George said with slightly forced enthusiasm. "Not in the right direction, but nevertheless—"  
  
"It didn't move at all, George," Pallas groaned, resting her head on her arms. "Stop trying to make me feel better."  
  
"All right then," George said cheerfully. "But don't poke your eye out with the wand or your spells will get worse."  
  
"I don't think they can get worse." Pallas was on the point of flinging the wand at Fred when the door creaked open.  
  
"Dinner," said Rory as she nudged the door open with her foot. She was holding a covered platter and had two more floating behind her. "And if you'll just put your wands away, little masters, I won't be saying anything to your parents." Fred retrieved his wand and stuck it in his belt.  
  
"What's cooking?" Ron asked eagerly. "Smells delicious."  
  
Rory smiled, her brown face crinkling. "This is a dish from my homeland. It's a surprise—but I'd wait until I bring the pitchers of water upstairs if I were you." She turned and went out in the hallway.  
  
"Where's she from?" Pallas asked curiously, lifting up the cover of one of the platters. "Looks like some sort of seafood to me."  
  
Hermione shrugged. "I think she's from someplace on the Caribbean. She speaks French, anyhow. I heard her talking to that Noirclair woman earlier."  
  
Ron lifted a plate onto his lap and took a heaping forkful of shrimp and rice. "I don't care, I'm starving." He shoved it into his mouth. Within seconds his face had turned a shade of red that rivaled the peppers in the rice. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his eyes began to tear up. Ron swallowed with a visible effort, panting like his lungs were on fire. "Delicious," he gasped. "And also there's this strange feeling like my eyeballs are melting." Everyone laughed as Rory came back in with several large water pitchers and a loaf of bread.  
  
"Ah, young master Weasley," she said with a smile, handing him a thick slice of bread and a pitcher of water. "You appreciate the cuisine of New Orleans?"  
  
"Is that in hell?" Ron asked, wiping his streaming eyes on his shirtsleeve.  
  
"No, just America," she teased while pouring him a glass of water to wash down the bread he had stuffed in his mouth. "If the rest of you chose not to follow young master Weasley's example, pick out the peppers before you eat. Excuse me." She left once more, her mismatched eyes twinkling.  
  
The twins, Harry, Hermione, and Ron took Rory's advice and picked out every visible piece of pepper before eating. Pallas shrugged off the kindly housekeeper's warning and took a heaping spoonful of rice, peppers and shrimp. She chewed thoughtfully for a moment, made a face, and swallowed. Everyone else stared at her, waiting for the inevitable reaction to the hot Cajun dish.  
  
"I've had worse," she said, and then continued eating without comment.  
  
"You must have guts of steel," George said as he took a gulp of water.  
  
"No, I've just been eating school food for a couple years. What kind of food do you get at Hogwarts?" she asked, picking a piece of pepper out from between her teeth.  
  
"It's excellent," said Hermione once she realized Harry and Ron were too busy drinking to reply. "What do they feed you at your school?"  
  
Pallas laughed and pushed a handful of her wavy hair behind her ears. "Well, we fondly refer to them at MRE's," she grinned. "Meals Rejected by Ethiopians." She took another large bite of the food, paused, and reached for the water jug. "This has much more—flavor," she commented in between drinks of water.  
  
"I guess we've been a bit pampered by Hogwarts food," Harry observed as he picked out another slice of pepper.  
  
"Yes, this has given me an excellent insight on what might happen if we upset the house elves," Ron said, his eyes still watering madly.  
  
Hermione sat up straight. "House elf!" she said. "I thought something was different about this place. Where's Kreacher?"  
  
There was a silence as thick as butter. Harry paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. Fred and George exchanged bland glances while Ron shot a nervous look over his shoulder at Harry. Pallas looked as if she would very much like to ask who Kreacher was, but Hermione shot her a look that, while not on the same level as Pallas's hippogriff glare, at least shut the younger girl up.  
  
Harry put his fork down calmly. "Well I rather hope he's not dead yet," he heard himself say in a calm voice. Pallas shot him a Look, he glared right back.  
  
"Er," said Hermione, her face set in a forced calm. "Um."  
  
"It's no use not telling me," Pallas told Harry. "We're far past the point of 'what you don't know can't hurt you'."  
  
"It's none of your business!" he snapped.  
  
Pallas raised her eyebrows. "Should I mind?" she asked innocently.  
  
"I don't have to tell you everything, just because I felt sorry for you once or twice—"  
  
"Grab hold of your ears, Harry!" she retorted. Harry was saved having to think of a reply to this extraordinary statement by the door swinging open. Rory stood silhouetted in the dim hallway, a lamp floating behind her. It caught the fine silver hairs around her face and gave her a gleaming halo. Without a word she raised an eyebrow and the temperature in the room dropped several degrees as she looked at each of them in turn. It wasn't like Pallas's soul-piercing glare; it was as though Rory had suddenly transformed herself into an ice sculpture.  
  
"Hey, she started it," George pointed out, nodding at Hermione.  
  
"Do you know what happened to Kreacher?" Harry asked her, meeting her eyes with effort. The gray one winked at him.  
  
"He's dead," she said shortly. "I was sent up to get the twin Mr. Weasleys and Miss Leander—and also Mr. Potter, if he'd be obliged to come." She gestured at Fred and George, then turned and left the room. Her silver hair twinkled from where it lay loose down her back. Harry hurried after her.  
  
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Did Dumbledore kill him?"  
  
"I killed him," Rory told him, face unreadable. "It was my final favor to Master Black, him that was your godfather." She stopped halfway down the stairs and looked up at him, her curiously young face very somber. "Would you have killed him, Harry?"  
  
"Harry hasn't killed anyone," Pallas chirped as she slid past him on the banister, hair streaming and once more tangled. "At least not yet, though sometimes I do wonder." Rory raised her eyebrows at Harry.  
  
"I haven't killed anyone," Harry denied vehemently. "She just thinks I go to St. Brutus's Secure-Something-or-Another."  
  
"Can you blame her?" George asked as he and Fred caught up to the other three. "She's about as clueless as you were five-ish years ago."  
  
"Really?" Pallas asked from the landing below. "And why do portraits snore?"  
  
"Because they're sleeping and have large noses," replied Fred offhandedly, who was less fond of the hapless younger girl than his twin. "Why do they want to see us, Rory?"  
  
Rory shrugged. "It's not for me to say," she said modestly as she continued down the stairs.  
  
"Oh, come on," George wheedled. "You know you can't keep a secret from us for long."  
  
"We're far too charming."  
  
"And dashing."  
  
"And utterly—"  
  
"Hush!" Rory told them with mock severity as they passed Mrs. Black's portrait. "Don't wake the old hag."  
  
They walked in silence down the final hallway, giving Harry ample time to think about what Rory had said. "Would you have killed him, Harry?" Her honest stare drilled into his mind. Would he? Harry thought about Kreacher laughing as he told Dumbledore that he'd betrayed Sirius to his death, and his fists tightened. Yes. He definitely would have killed Kreacher. Possible with his bare hands, since he was forbidden to use magic during school holidays.  
  
"Would you have killed him, Harry?" His face flushed with a sort of guilty acceptance of these murderous thoughts. He had entertained thoughts of killing Bellatrix Lestrange since the Department of Mysteries. At first these ideas had scared him, then they'd become simple dark shades in his mind—not right, but not unwanted. It wasn't as hard to add a second person—well, creature—to his mental hit list.  
  
Was this how it had happened to those Death Eaters who killed for fun? Did it start with just one and then escalate to more and more?  
  
"Harry," Fred whispered.  
  
"What?" he asked, snapping out of his reverie. "What is it?"  
  
"It's Loony Lovegood."  
  
Harry peering down the steps and saw a thin girl, a little shorter than he, with waist-length wavy blonde hair and a pair of orange radishes dangling from her ears, staring up at him with bemusement. "Some how I thought you'd be here," Luna Lovegood said. An assortment of quills was stuck in her hair at odd angles, giving her the curious look of a half-molted bird. A pad of paper was jammed into the back pocket of her jeans. "It's just unlikely enough to be true." With that statement she whipped the pad of paper out and pulled a quill out of her fair hair. "Do you have any comments on this spate of Time Travel disasters the Ministry has been experiencing?"  
  
"What are you doing here?" Harry asked, as Pallas shrieked with delight from behind him and nearly tackled Luna.  
  
Luna staggered backwards, her quill flying as the shorter blonde hugged her around the waist. "Nothing much," she shrugged vaguely. "Hullo? Do I know you?" she asked blankly, her misty eyes looking down at the younger girl with surprise.  
  
"Fatty Terry's daughter?" Pallas asked. "I think the last time we met was at your mum's—well, you know."  
  
"My mother's funeral?" Luna replied, musingly. "Yes, but Fat Teresa didn't really want you near me, did she?"  
  
"No, I think she thought I'd catch some type of sickness from you. She always told me that your mum was crazy."  
  
"Well, she was a bit mad. Elizabeth isn't here, is she?"  
  
Pallas stiffened. "Oh no. She's not—at least I hope not—is she?" Her face fell. "I really despise her."  
  
Luna raised her eyebrows higher. "She's got the people skills of a black widow spider."  
  
Harry, Fred and George exchanged mystified looks. "Have you got any clue what they're on about?" Fred asked Harry, who shook his head. "Are they related? They look rather alike."  
  
"I don't really think so," George protested. Harry was unsure—though they both had the long wavy hair and similar build, Luna projected an air of complete dottiness, while Pallas had a sort of hard-edged innocence and her hippogriff stare. Pallas's hair was also much lighter than Luna's, while Luna's eyes were rounder and paler.  
  
"We're cousins," Pallas explained to the boys. "There's only a bit of family resemblance in this side of the family."  
  
"Ah," said Harry. "I would never have guessed."  
  
"I didn't doubt it," said Luna vaguely, before wandering off to examine the fireplace. Pallas trailed after her until she spotted the dessert table and single-handedly attacked a large pudding made by Mrs. Weasley.  
  
This left them to marvel at the changed state of the formerly dirty, rather empty kitchen. The brick floors glowed red and clean, the walls had been wiped down, and the various pots and pans hanging from the ceiling had been shined and pushed to the walls. Several long tables were laden with the homely plates and silverware that had been cleaned to brilliance and then covered with Rory's spicy food and Mrs. Weasley's excellent cuisine. Standing in between the tables were thirty or so adults with plates of food or pitchers of water raised to their faces. Some Harry recognized easily—Remus Lupin and Hagrid were talking in one corner, Charlie, Bill and Mr. Weasley were talking to Mad Eye Moody, and to his horror Severus Snape stood across from Eponine Noirclair, looking cross and pinched—which was not unusual for the Potions Professor.  
  
"What's Snape doing here?" he asked George, who grimaced.  
  
"It's an Order meeting," George replied. "And he's part of the Order, isn't he?"  
  
"So why are we here, if this is a top-secret Order Meeting?"  
  
"S'not top-secret," Fred interjected. "A few of these people aren't even in the order—that Noirclair woman for one." He pointed out several people Harry didn't recognize along with Eponine, who was holding the attention of several men in the room with ease. It was true that she was very beautiful, but Harry found her cold.  
  
"Hide me," Pallas ordered just then, scampering back from the tables of food and ducking between Fred and George. Though they were only an inch or two taller than the lanky Pallas, they were solid enough to be an effective shield.  
  
"What's up?" George asked her. "Bad pasty?"  
  
Pallas rolled her eyes. "Nothing disagrees with me. It's just—she's here."  
  
"Who's she?" Harry asked curiously. Pallas gave him a Look, still hunkered down between the twins.  
  
"Lizzie Borden, the cousin from hell."  
  
"Who's Lizzie Borden?"  
  
"Some American—you know, 'Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her father forty whacks'—but that's not important. I'm going straight back upstairs. I refuse to talk to her." Pallas ducked lower as a curvy girl with blonde curls cropped to frame a very pretty face came through the crowd. Her wide blue eyes took in all around her with single sweep, and within seconds she was walking about like it was her castle.  
  
Fred glanced back at her. "She doesn't look so bad."  
  
"You wouldn't say that if she'd set your skirt on fire when you were four." Harry, Fred, and George all stared at her. Pallas shrugged. "She did. She hates Muggles without bounds."  
  
Luna meandered back over, her vague gray eyes suddenly very alert and alarmed. "Elizabeth's here," she commented casually to Fred and George. "I've remembered why I don't like her."  
  
"Why?" Fred and Harry asked curiously.  
  
She shook her head and smoothed her face back to utter vagueness. "I don't think I'll say," she demurred. "But we've got to go listen to a Ministry official, Pallas and I." She wandered off again.  
  
"Do you think Luna's mother ever had doubts about taking her outdoors?" Pallas asked, poking her head out. "She seems like the sort who would wander all the way to Russia before she realized anything was out of place."  
  
"She's a lot smarter than you'd think. She's in Ravenclaw."  
  
Pallas gave Harry one of her Looks. "You mean that Luna is a witch too?"  
  
"Well, yes. She does attend Hogwarts."  
  
She shrugged it off, but still looked very uncomfortable. "I wish I were a witch," she said miserably. "I'm sick of being the only one here that needs rescuing."  
  
"Well, you still might be," George said encouragingly.  
  
"Yea, I'd rather have you be Rowena than that Elizabeth or Luna," Fred added.  
  
"But I'm not sure I—"  
  
"Miss Pallas, I'd be obliged if you'd follow me," Rory said, appearing suddenly on the stairs behind them. She looked vastly irritated. "And hurry, if you don't mind overmuch." She led Pallas away.  
  
"How'd she get up the stairs?" Fred asked. "We've been blocking them this whole time."  
  
"She probably Apparated," Harry suggested, rather surprised that the twins hadn't thought of this immediately. They had abused their Apparition privileges more than anyone he'd ever met.  
  
"No," George waved his hand dismissively. "She can't. Terrified of Apparating. I think she might have splinched herself when she was taking her tests."  
  
"Yea, we've eased off a bit," Fred added. "Watching people Apparate makes her drop whatever she's carrying, and after two dinners and a shrieking urn we decided it was best to go with subtlety over speed."  
  
"A shrieking urn?"  
  
Fred and George exchanged sly looks. "I've got a bet on with Bill that it's got the ashes of dear old Mrs. Black in it," George said.  
  
"Maybe there's some secret passages in this old wreck," Fred suggested, eyeing the rough paneling and solid brick floors. "Servant's passages, perhaps?"  
  
"I think you've got something there," George replied. "'Scuse us, Harry, we're off to do some passage-hunting." The twins went back upstairs, red heads bent together conspiratorially.  
  
Harry turned his attention back to the adults. After a moment's search, he spotted the three blonde girls being addressed by a gawky, stooped man who hadn't quite managed to brush all the ink and gray dust off his clothes before he had Apparated. He was holding several rolls of parchment and had a large satchel slung over a chair. The bag was straining at the seams with the effort of containing several large books that were as dusty as the man. Eponine Noirclair stood close by, watching with keen interest. Snape was still by her side, though more interested in nursing his scorched tongue than the proceedings before him. Lupin was also watching, though he was also watching Rory, who was bustling around in a high bad temper, refilling water pitchers and whisking away dirty glasses.  
  
A flash of red hair caught his eye, and to his great surprise he saw Percy sitting alone in the corner. He looked dreadful. His face was so pale that it looked like skim milk, and he was so thin that Harry could see his collarbone through the black robes he wore. The horn-rimmed glasses he was never without seemed to have grown too large for his face, and kept sliding down his nose and over his protruding cheekbones. Harry felt a little sorry for Percy, ignored by his family and the Ministry alike. Of course, Harry wasn't altogether ready to forgive Percy, but he was a pitiful sight.  
  
"Bit of a scene, isn't it?" Ron said off-handedly. When Harry jumped and turning around, he said scornfully "Do you really think we'd stay holed up in that room while interesting things are going on down here?" Ginny and Hermione grinned at him from the top of the stairs.  
  
"We figured that there's too much going on for them to really notice us," Ginny said. "And there's no use for the Extendable Ears here. Way too much interference."  
  
"Why is Luna's here?" Hermione said in confusion. "I thought that this was an Order meeting."  
  
"Luna," Harry told her, "Is Pallas's cousin."  
  
"What's that got to do with anything?" Ginny said.  
  
Hermione's eyes widened. "You don't mean—Luna could be Rowena Ravenclaw?" Ginny's jaw dropped.  
  
"You've got to be joking. Loony Lovegood, founding Hogwarts?" Ron blurted. Hermione shushed him, but it was too late. Rory appeared out of the crowd, looking displeased and irritated.  
  
"Mr. and Miss Weasley, Miss Granger, Mr. Potter—you will all go back to your rooms this instant."  
  
"But you said—" Harry protested.  
  
"Never mind what I said. I've been overruled, and you will all go upstairs. Must I follow you to make sure that you make it to your rooms?" Rory raised her silver eyebrows. Her mismatched eyes bored into each of theirs in turn. Without a word, Harry turned and stalked upstairs, followed by Ron and Hermione. Ginny tailed sullenly behind, watched closely by the housekeeper. Once they got to the first landing, they turned and looked down. Rory's silver head turned to watch the rest of the room, but she maintained her post at the bottom of the stairs.  
  
"Damn," said Ginny. "I was hoping she'd take our side for once."  
  
"Yea," Ron agreed. "She always sides with the adults."  
  
"I still like her," Hermione objected. "Even if she is willingly committing herself to servitude."  
  
Ron rolled his eyes. "Hermione, don't you dare start that spew thing with Rory. She's being paid!"  
  
"Not nearly what she should be. She's on call all day and night with only Sundays off, she cleans, cooks—"  
  
"Shh!" Harry told them as Mrs. Black's curtains came into view. Ginny ignored his warning and jerked the curtains apart ferociously, seemingly deaf to the screeches of the horrible old woman.  
  
"MUDBLOODS! MUGGLE-LOVERS! FILTH!"  
  
"Ginny, can't you find another way of letting them know that you're pissed?" George asked from the landing above. "You lot, get up here. Fred and I've found something rather interesting."  
  
"I bet they've found some sort of secret passageway," Ron told Harry over the screams. "They've been searching for one all summer."  
  
It was a rug, about five feet by seven, holey and missing great chunks of fringe from its border. The intertwined serpents that made up the border were faded and threadbare; as if the rug had been dirtied and laundered so many times that it was close to unraveling.  
  
"That's it?" Ron said. "Fred, it's just a rug."  
  
"But is it?" Fred said in impersonation of the Quibbler. "This rug—believe it or not—is the best thing we've found in here all summer. Will you do the honors, George?" George made an elegant leg and kicked the rug so that it rolled into a lumpy roll. Beneath it was a big trap door, which George pulled up to reveal a flight of stairs.  
  
"This is the truly excellent part. These passages go just about everywhere, including behind the kitchen walls," George waggled his eyebrows at them. "Who wants to join me in some old-fashioned eavesdropping?" The vote was unanimous. 


	6. The Writings of Willard the Reformed

**Chapter 6: The Writings of Willard the Reformed**  
  
They crept along, single-file, trying their best to make no noise. George occasionally whispered "Right up here," or "Watch your heads along this one," as they made their way down three levels of passages and behind the brick wall that made up the back of the kitchen. Within five minutes the six friends were aligned behind minute cracks and crevices, peering out at the three girls and the dusty man. He gazed turtlishly at the cousins, the too-large but well-starched jacket lending a shell-like quality to his back.  
  
"Sir," said Elizabeth, smiling prettily, "I'm afraid that I don't understand your logic."  
  
"Well," said the man, pushing his lank brown hair behind his ears, "Rowena Ravenclaw is a witch, so therefore you all must be witches."  
  
"But she—" Elizabeth pointed at Pallas, distaste evident on her features, "is most definitely not a witch. She's the child of Squibs, good heavens man." She laughed like an Empress confronted with an embarrassingly biological manner far too low for her to take seriously.  
  
The man peered at Pallas, whose profile was visible to Harry through the crack in the wall. One of her pale blue eyes was visible as she sent a jagged look at Elizabeth's prim face. "Well, she's got to be," said the man practically. "Because out of the six great-granddaughters, the one too old is Athena, the Squib is Helen, Luna's sister, and the girl who died is—"  
  
"I never knew Luna had a sister," Ginny whispered to Harry. "Did she say anything about it to you?"  
  
"No, shhh," Harry shushed her.  
  
"We know, Master Troy," Elizabeth said with obvious patience. "You've said it many times."  
  
"Well," the man—Master Troy—said, rather taken aback. "Then you should understand." He turned around when the girl opened her pink mouth to protest then closed it, her chin poking out in defiance. Luna and Pallas exchanged bland glances as Troy flipped through his many rolls of parchment, coming up with a dusty half-sheet that looked as though someone had spilled a cup of tea on it. He cleared his throat noisily and began to read.  
  
"From the records of Brother Willard the Reformed, recorder of the Abbey of St. James the Lesser, year of our Lord 989.  
  
"Today was a marvelous day for we simple monks of St. James, for today we were visited by the most lovely woman in Christendom. Well, actually it was quite dreadful, reminded me of all the bloody sex I had to give up when I took my vows. She was very beautiful, but traveled alone but for a man whom I must assume is her keeper or husband. Nay, not husband, for she wore not a ring, but still there to keep her away from rogues. And monks. In fact, that boy was damned irritating. Wouldn't even let me help the lady with her cloak, only stalked about and demanded to know where Godric Gryffindor was."  
  
The man scanned ahead a bit, raised his eyebrows appreciatively, and continued.  
  
"—The most remarkable feature of this girl was her hair, long hair so fair as to be near white, as shiny as water on a clear day. It fell in a most comely fashion to her hips—and those made every Brother regret his vows to God, but this fine hair also hid her face from us, as though she were ashamed of it. Since I remained in the gatehouse after being rebuked by that lout of a man, I saw what the others did not, including her bare ankle as she sat and stood." Troy paused and skipped past what came next, two spots of pink appearing under his gray skin. "But I did see that she was not marked by pox nor made less beautiful by age. The Abbot did dare to ask the lady her name, and though she looked away in her maidenly shyness, her varlet answered fearlessly: "Her name is Rowena, and she is long betrothed." After this they took their leave north, presumably to find this Godric, who I must assume hold the ring for the lady."  
  
Pallas went white, her pupils flaring to their most indignant size. "Wait just a bloody moment," she commanded. "Do you mean to say that if any of us are Rowena, we've got to go back in time and marry some bloke twice our age?" She shook her head violently, disgusted by the thought. Harry watched in horror as he saw Pallas's thick blonde ponytail swish on her back, at least waist length though it was very tangled. It was a fine head of hair, bleached almost white at the tips by the sun. Luna blinked blandly up at Troy, who was watching Elizabeth nervously. The third girl was white with anger, her teeth were grinding audibly, and it was suddenly very apparent that her hair was barely shoulder length.  
  
"Boy, she's really eager to do this, isn't she?" Harry murmured under his breath to George, who was at the hole next to him.  
  
George made a muted, but still very rude noise. "She's welcome to it. I don't want Pallas to get whisked off someplace where she'll get felled by the plague in a week."  
  
"Rowena Ravenclaw didn't die of the plague," Hermione whispered from Harry's other side. "It's in Hogwarts, A History."  
  
Harry leaned back as George climbed over and past him in the narrow passageway to stand next to Hermione. "How does she die?" George demanded. In the faint light shining through the peepholes, Harry could see that Hermione was taken aback. "How does Rowena die?"  
  
"I—I don't know," Hermione stuttered. "I just know that she doesn't die of the plague." George harrumphed and fell silent once more, his freckled face indignant in the twilight of the passageway. She raised her eyebrows at Ginny, who stifled a giggle.  
  
"He's not very deft at hiding his feelings when it comes to girls," Ginny said quietly from his far left. "It's pretty funny, actually."  
  
Harry blinked at her, taking a moment to consider what she'd said. "What? You mean—George and Pallas—she's a little kid!" he sputtered. "She's only twelve!"  
  
"Thirteen," Ginny corrected him. "Her birthday was yesterday."  
  
"But still—" Harry protested, then Ginny clapped a hand over his mouth and pointed out into the room where Luna was trying to engage Troy in a discussion about Ramoras, the powerful silver fish that could anchor ships and whether or not Fudge had used a pair of them to create a pair of unique leather boots. For a moment Harry didn't understand why Ginny wanted him to pay attention, then he saw Elizabeth leaning over to Pallas, her fingers bunched up tightly in her wand pocket. Pallas was busy with the laces on her ratty trainers and didn't see it coming.  
  
"Oh, shit," George said in a normal tone that echoed in the narrow passageway.  
  
Pallas looked up curiously, and Elizabeth's wand hit her directly in the eye. "Ow!" she cried, striking out automatically and knocking Elizabeth out of her chair and into the smoking coals of the fire. Pallas jumped to her feet, one hand clasped over her eye, and in the confusion Harry saw her cousin hit her with a curse, the words muffled by Eponine's shriek as a flaming coal abruptly shortened her hem, and then a firm hand grabbed his shoulder.  
  
"You think that servants don't know about servant's passages?" Rory asked grimly. She seized Harry by the ear (something that he hadn't had done since he was seven and had tried to run away from school) and marched him upstairs with Ginny in her other hand. Fred and George had run for it down the other end of the passageway, and Harry suspected Ron was with them. He felt Hermione's breath of the back of his neck as he was dragged up the passageway.  
  
"Now listen, all of you," Rory said, releasing them and looking each in the eyes in turn. "If I ever—and I mean ever catch any of you down in those passages spying on any Order business again, I'll modify your memories myself." Her face didn't inspire the kind of fear that Dumbledore's or McGonagall's did when one was in trouble, but the desperation in her voice gave Harry some momentary feelings of guilt. "I'm charged by Dumbledore to keep the Order Meetings secret and I've never failed in a job."  
  
"Don't worry," said Ginny with a reassuring smile and a hand on Rory's shoulder. "We'll do as you say."  
  
Rory made a disbelieving noise, but then smiled tightly and pointed up the stairs. "You all need to go upstairs, and don't think I won't be making sure that you're all there."  
  
"But Pallas! That evil cousin of hers just hexed her," Harry exclaimed. "Shouldn't we check and see if she's all right?"  
  
"Elizabeth? She doesn't have a wand. How on earth would she hex someone?"  
  
"Hex who? She just poked me in the bloody eye with it," Pallas snapped around a hefty chunk of ice. "I didn't think that wands had many practical uses, but trust Elizabeth to find a good one." She was in a high bad temper and stormed upstairs despite Rory's soft protests. Ginny watched her go with a slightly amused expression, Hermione with concern, and Harry wondered why on earth Pallas hadn't thrown a punch at Elizabeth (or anyone, really). It was a display of self-control that surpassed his expectations of her.  
  
"Oh," Rory gasped suddenly. "I forgot. Will you take these things upstairs? They're Miss Leander's—her father thought that she'd want them." She pulled out a shopping bag that was half-full of various things—a few pairs of jeans, a smelly pair of spikes, a field hockey stick, several hockey balls, and a soccer ball.  
  
Harry took the handles of the bag as Ginny reached inside and took out the soccer ball. "What's this? It's weird." She twirled it absentmindedly as they continued up the stairs to the room Pallas was sharing with Hermione and herself. The door was closed. Harry knocked hesitantly.  
  
"Piss off!"  
  
He really hadn't expected her to welcome them with tea and biscuits, so in reply he opened the door all the way, ducking a pillow as he entered. Harry paused in horror at the scene that greeted them. Pallas was perched on a chair so that she could see herself in the gold-rimmed mirror over the fireplace, a pocketknife in one hair, her long hair caught up in the other. For a moment he was transfixed with the fear that she had already taken a chunk out of her hair or perhaps her neck, but when Hermione rushed over and relieved her of the knife, it was clear she hadn't yet.  
  
"Give that back!" Pallas yelled, overturning the chair as she jumped down. "What're you playing at?"  
  
"Where did you get that?" Ginny asked, taking the knife from Hermione and examining it. "This is George's—did you steal it?"  
  
"Borrowed," Pallas corrected, fingering her swollen eye. She seemed to have shrunken with the loss of her weapon of choice. "I just wanted to make sure that I would get home in one piece."  
  
"You can't expect Elizabeth to leave you alone if you cut off your hair," Hermione said practically. "She's just angry that she's not good enough."  
  
"I bet she works some witchery tonight and comes up with blonde hair to her knees tomorrow." Pallas fingered one of her tangles wistfully. "If only I could do that—cut it all off until Elizabeth or Luna gets zapped back to god-knows-when, and then do a little magic and have it all back." Her hippogriff's eyes settled on Harry. "What's all that?"  
  
"Your dad sent it," Harry said, plunking it down on the faded carpet. "Its mostly sports stuff, but there's some clothes in here."  
  
Pallas walked over and ran her hands over the spikes and jeans, then stopped, suddenly very cold and very angry. "Why has he sent it?"  
  
"I think he thinks you've been accepted into some sort of summer camp," Harry said blithely despite Hermione's meaningful look in his direction and Ginny's meaningful foot stomping on his.  
  
"And...if I'm sent back to whenever...he'll just forget about me?" Pallas flushed and her eyes snapped to each of them in turn, reading the guilty looks like banners. "Well isn't that just lovely," she said in a voice of forced calm, and then picked up the soccer ball and threw it at the mirror so hard that it shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. Harry ducked behind the door and avoided most of the flying splinters, but didn't quite manage to avoid the lamp that smashed against the doorframe.  
  
Hermione, who bore a small cut across the bridge of her nose, cried out "Pallas, get a hold on yourself!"  
  
"Tell those bastards that run your government to get a hold on their ears so that their heads don't get stuck in their asses!" she shrieked. "They've got it all worked out so that I just stop existing, I don't have a choice, and they've told my father that I'm at a summer camp when I'm stuck in this stupid house with a bunch of stupid wizards and a bunch of stupid wands and pictures and bloody homicidal cousins..."  
  
"I'll try and calm her down," Ginny said, and pushed Harry and Hermione out of the room.  
  
It was no surprise to either of them that Ginny stomped out of the room less than a minute later, mussed and looking hassled. "There's no reasoning with a maniac," she said, her voice high and thin with frustration.  
  
"None at all," Hermione reassured her with a pat on the shoulder. "Come on, lets go upstairs and wait for her to calm down."  
  
Harry thought that this might be a long time coming, considering Pallas's stunted history of forgiveness and grace. It was more likely that she would either show up bald at breakfast or punch Elizabeth's lights out. It was clear that she was capable of either, and Harry knew which one he preferred. He allowed himself to get sucked into the girl's conversation as they went upstairs to wait out the storm.  
  
Waldo's office was quite a sight to behold. Stacks of papers and files stood as high as the ceiling, cabinets with their doors half-off stuffed with thick books and albums. A huge easel in the corner farthest from the door held the genealogies of every significant family from before the fall of Rome to the present day. A large box of scrolls teetered on top of a stack of portraits and photographs. Waldo's desk was a magnificent antique oaken thing, which would have taken at least five men to move. It was buried under folders and notebooks and hundreds of loose pages of his notes on his viewings of the past.  
  
Troy flipped through Waldo's notes for what seemed the hundredth time. "How did the old man know which girl?" he mumbled to himself as his pick- like fingers riffled through the yellowing parchment. "Even Waldo's past- sight was hairy at best. The only way he'd be able to tell is if he had actually talked to the real Rowena in the past, and none of that is in here." In frustration he crumpled up a piece of parchment that documented Waldo's unsuccessful attempt to prove that Wyoming was really just a giant hole in the middle of North America and pushed the rest of the papers onto the floor.  
  
Which, in retrospect, was a really dumb idea. Not only did it not suddenly reveal the true Rowena Ravenclaw, but it also put the already unorganized papers into a higher level of disarray. In fact, the only things revealed were several long scratched in the top of the desk that looked unnervingly like claw-marks. Troy heaved his slouching frame wearily out of Waldo's chair and crawled about on the floor, trying to round the papers up.  
  
"Er—is this a bad time?"  
  
Troy was forced to look around his hind end from his position on the floor to see a dusty mirror the size of about half a sheet of parchment. It had been cracked more than once, and the spider's web of shiny silver made the face of the young boy in the mirror look like a cubist painting. The boy raised his eyebrows politely. He was wearing a tall, white, powdered wig with several layers of curls framing a face only slightly less round than Troy's. With carefully concealed dismay, he bowed from the waist.  
  
The hapless Ministry official scrambled to his feet and bowed in return, aware that he looked like a fool. "Excuse me, but—who are you?"  
  
"Viscount Albert the fifth. Who are you? I wasn't aware that Mousier Waldo's mirror had been relocated. What year is it in your time?" the boy demand. His voice faded in and out as if it were coming from a badly tuned radio. One moment it was rather too loud, the next it was a bare whisper. Troy suddenly felt a little bad about how often he had laughed behind Waldo's back at his odd manner of speaking. The poor old man had probably considered it quite normal after all his conversations with people through his magic mirror.  
  
"It's 1996," Troy said, completely nonplussed. "What's your year?"  
  
"1713. Has Waldo died then?"  
  
"No, but he's gone mad."  
  
"What?" Albert scoffed. "What on earth do you mean by mad? Insubordinate cheek!" His fragmented face faded for a moment, then sharpened. "Who are you? I need to warn the others not to use this mirror if you're on the other end now."  
  
"Wait!" Troy shouted, scrambling over Waldo's desk. "Wait, don't go! I'm just one of the—the servant-ish things around here. I didn't mean to offend you."  
  
"Yes, I suspected that," said Albert condescendingly. "You seem far too simple to operate the mirror." He rested his boyish face on his cupped hands. "What do you want?"  
  
"I'd like to tap into your expansive wisdom, good sir," Troy replied, very relieved that he had not driven the pompous viscount away. He realized that talking to this young noble was going to be a lot like talking to Fudge: shameless flattering. "How do all these mirrors work, enlightened one?"  
  
"Well, actually there's only about seven of them," Albert replied. "But since different people possessed them at different times there's an awful lot of people you can reach through them. You just breathe on the mirror and speak the name of the person you want to talk to. Then you wait a few moments while the mirror looks for them and voila."  
  
The Ministry official wrinkled his forehead and tried to look as dumb as Albert was making him feel. "Can I use it to call my grandmother?"  
  
The viscount laughed heartily. "No, my dear simpleton, you can only talk to someone who has another mirror. I think that by 1996 there's only one mirror left, so it's highly unlike your grandmother is hiding one in her petticoats."  
  
Troy bowed deeply from the waist. "Does this prince of wisdom know of one called Rowena Ravenclaw?"  
  
Albert snorted. "Just turn over the mirror, stupid." His face faded from view.  
  
With trembling hands Troy lifted the mirror off it's hook on the wall and looked on the back. It was covered in plate glass, beneath which symbols written in mercury twisted and turned fitfully. Etched into the plate glass, worn almost smooth with age, was the symbol of an eagle. Beneath it, in small, precise handwriting, was the name of the maker.  
  
"Rowena Ravenclaw!"

_Author's Note: Gah! I love this, but it's so distracting, especially when I've got finals to cram for. However, judging by the newborn and yet unpublished chapter, I do my best when I'm not supposed to be writing. Review, por favor._


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